Following our ongoing journey to experience food, drink and culture from around the world.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

BEER FLOATS

Two great things that taste great together. No, I'm not talking about peanut butter and chocolate. Even better - beer and ice cream...The Beer Float!! I've been reading some great things about restaurants and pubs doing a beer floats and recently had one at Golden State. Naturally I had to do some experimenting myself. It was a very fun project. I got a selection of different beers and tried them each with both Haagen-Dazs vanilla and chocolate ice creams. I kept the the beers selection along the heavier types, stouts and porters. Though I've read you can do some great things with Lambics and sorbets I figured I could try only so many in one night. What made this so interesting was that the flavor of each changed dramatically with the different ice cream flavors. Probably doesn't sound surprising that adding vanilla as opposed to chocolate would produce a different taste but in this case, it brough out different flavors in each of the beers. Can't wait to try some more combinations!!

St. Peters Cream Stout - This was both of our favorites. With the vanilla ice cream the beer was a perfect compliment. The chocolate was also good but the vanilla was just a tad better

Youn's Luxury Double Chocolate Stout - The idea here was to get a chocolate beer that would go with both ice creams. It didn't quite work out. It wasn't bad, but it just tasted bitter and the chocolate in the beer tasted weird (sorry but no more descriptive terms come to mind).

New Belgium Brewing Co. Belgian Stout - I chose this one specifically to go with chocolate ice cream. The idea was that a dark belgian beer should mix well with creamy chocolate ice cream. It worked!!! The ice cream brought out the best flavors of the beer and vice versa.

I still have a few more beers to try, but a person can only have so many beer floats on any given day. I don't even want to know what the calorie count of this adventure was!!!